STATEMENT OF
WILLIAM SANJOUR
CHIEF, HAZARDOUS WASTE IMPLEMENTATION BRANCH
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE

AUGUST 1, 1979

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am
William Sanjour, Chief of the Hazardous Waste Implementation Branch of
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I was formerly Chief of the
Assessment and Technology Branch in the Hazardous Waste Management Division.
I am here at the request of the Subcommittee to
testify on what I know of the development of regulations for hazardous
waste under the Resource Conservation arid Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA).
My testimony will focus on the process by which the proposed regulations
were arrived at, particularly with regard to EPA upper management actions
and directives that affected the development of the regulations. In my
opinion, those actions and directives reflect EPA mismanagement and departure
from the statutory mandate and are a major contributor to the delay in
promulgating the RCRA regulations.
I have been with EPA for seven years, and before
that I had been a management consultant and had spent several years working
on environmental problems. I have a masters degree in physics and have
completed advanced studies in operations research. Prior to joining EPA,
I spent twelve years doing operations research in the Navy and in private
industry with particular emphasis on the cost benefit analysis of technical
systems.

Nature of the Hazardous Waste Problem

In 1974, I joined the newly formed Hazardous Waste
Division as Chief of the Assessment and Technology Branch. My duties were
to supervise the branch in the conduct of studies to assess the breadth
and depth of the hazardous waste problem in the U.S. and to evaluate the
technology for handling it. This concern over the indiscriminate disposal
of industrial chemical waste into the land was only first beginning to
be explored on a national level and our pioneer studies brought to light
an awesome problem. The findings of these studies have been eloquently
summarized recently by Mr. Leslie
Dach, and I would like to quote him:

This nation's current hazardous waste management
practices are an environmental catastrophe of staggering proportions. American
industry generates over 96 billion pounds of hazardous waste a year. Of
that amount, which is roughly equivalent to the total weight of every car
now on the road, less than 10% is disposed of properly. The rest seriously
threatens the water we drink, the air we breathe and the environment we
enjoy. Included in this 96 million pound figure are chemical poisons that
kill and debilitate ... chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects and
nervous system damage. Often these are chemicals that have already made
the headlines ... like asbestos, PCBs, and kepone.
The threat to groundwater is particularly serious.
Over half the American population relies on groundwater for its drinking
water supply. Almost one fifth of America's population relies on groundwater
from individual wells, wells without treatment systems ... so that polluted
water goes directly from the well into people's mouths. Groundwater is
an extremely fragile resource. It doesn't clean itself like surface water.
Once dirtied, it stays that way for hundreds of years. Polluted groundwater
travels like a slug. The pollutants don't mix well with the surrounding
water and, therefore, the chemicals remain highly concentrated.
The disease and dislocation caused by improperly
managed hazardous waste are ... already upon us, and new disasters are
discovered regularly. Groundwater supplies in towns like Toone, Tennessee,
and Grey, Maine, have been poisoned, and citizens are forced to find alternative
sources of drinking water. People in Love Canal, New York, have been forced
to leave their homes. Hundreds of others would like to leave, but no one
in their right mind will buy their property. Residents of Love Canal exhibit
extraordinarily high rates of birth defects and other illnesses.
These publicized incidents are only the tip of the
iceberg. EPA estimates that there are at least 30,000 hazardous waste dumps
sites across the country. A recent EPA study indicated that in at least
86% of the industrial land disposal sites investigated, hazardous materials
have migrated into water supplies off the premises of the site. In over
half the sites, groundwater had been contaminated to the point where it
violated EPA's drinking water standards. The status of surface impoundments
is similarly bleak. EPA indicates that most of the hundreds of thousands
of surface impoundments holding hazardous waste are unlined and unmonitored.

The research and analysis on this hazardous waste problem
was done under the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1970, and was closely monitored
by several committees of Congress. We worked closely with these committees
in developing various legislative proposals over a period of several years.
This work culminated in October 1976 with the passage of RCRA. The approach
taken in this Act to regulate hazardous waste was basically that approach
developed by EPA's Hazardous Waste Management Division as an outgrowth
of its studies. This Act passed both houses of Congress almost unanimously.

RCRA Regulations

Subtitle C of RCRA requires EPA to publish regulations
for managing hazardous waste within 18 months of enactment, that is by
May 1978. Section 3001 requires the Administrator to develop criteria for
identifying the characteristics of hazardous waste and for listing hazardous
waste Section 3002 and 3003 require EPA to issue standards for generators
and transporters of hazardous waste respecting record-keeping practices,
labeling, appropriate containers, use of a manifest system, and reporting
of quantities and disposition. Sections 3004 and 3005 require owners of
facilities which treat, store, or dispose of hazardous waste to obtain
a permit and requires the Administrator to develop standards for such facilities
as necessary to protect human health and the environment. The Act also
provides in Section 3006 for state assumption of the program.
Responsibility for drafting the regulations was
divided among the three branch chiefs of the Hazardous Waste Management
Division. I had responsibility for the hazardous waste facility standards
(Section 3004) and for notification (Section 3010). Since the need for
coordination was so great, we had daily meetings to thrash out our ideas
in order to be well informed on all aspects of the draft regulations.

EPA Attitude

It was clear that the earliest days that hazardous
waste regulation did not have the support of our upper management or the
Administration. For example:

The Administration instructed EPA officials and officials from other agencies,
to testify against passage of hazardous waste regulations when it was being
considered by Congress.

During the same period, EPA upper management urged the Hazardous Waste
Management Division to "jawbone" with industry rather than seek regulatory
authority over hazardous waste.

When RCRA passed, the Administration did not ask Congress for sufficient
resources to implement it.

The implementation of hazardous waste regulations was made subordinate
to the clean water program which was responsible for producing much of
the hazardous waste.

In general, efforts were made to downplay the need for hazardous waste
management.

Reasons for Delay

The mandated 18-month deadline set by Congress was
not met. In part this was because the deadline was unrealistically short.
In part it was because of the bureaucratic requirement of the EPA Administrator
that regulations go through a time consuming "Work Group" committee so
that everyone in the Agency can contribute to the process. But in my opinion
the principal reason for the delay was because this legislation did not
have support of our upper management or the Administration which showed
up as a lack of leadership and motivation.
In spite of this, by March of 1978, the technical
staff had completed drafting hazardous waste regulations. This was done
with the participation of all offices in EPA including the General Counsel
and our own Assistant Administrator. Innumerable meetings had been held
with every segment of the Federal government, state governments and local
governments, as well as industry, labor, environmentalists and other affected
parties. Every conceivable issue had been repeatedly debated and repeatedly
resolved. At that point the draft regulations reflected a culmination of
years of staff time and millions of taxpayersdollars spent
on studies that we incorporated into the regulations, which we expected
to be proposed in the FederalRegister after a few months
of upper management review and revision.

Cutback of Regulations

In June of 1978, however, we were informed by our
management that because of pressure from the White House to fight inflation,
the scope of the draft hazardous waste regulations would have to be reduced.
To that end, and in spite of the conclusions reached by the research in
which much time and money had been invested, and in spite of the RCRA requirements:

We were directed not to rely on objective characteristics and test protocols
to identify hazardous waste/ but to rely instead on lists of specific industries
to be regulated. It was felt that use of characteristics put too great
an economic burden on industry for testing. We were so informed despite
all the research we had invested in, despite the fact that RCRA doesn't
explicitly provide for consideration of "cost effective alternatives" in
developing regulations (as other environmental laws do) , and despite the
fact that the cost of regulating hazardous waste disposal properly is far
less than the economic, health and social costs of not regulating and of
later cleaning up the land;

We were to avoid regulating hazardous waste from the oil and gas industry,
electric power companies, and other large industries;

We were to avoid regulating the hazardous waste from industries or municipalities
which have water discharge permits under the Clean Water Act.

We were also told to stop looking for hazardous waste
disposal sites which posed an imminent hazard to public health, to delay
getting out the regulations while we restudied all possible options, and
to keep all this from the public.
To implement this new policy, we were told to do
things which we know were not right. We were required to write public documents
which we knew were misleading. The press and Congress and the public were
given misinformation while accurate information was suppressed. Our task
shifted to developing after-the-fact explanations to justify departures
from the mandates and intent of the Act. Everyone of us on the technical
staff had to make his own decision as to what extent he or she would be
a "good soldier" and obey orders or to be a good citizen and obey the law.
I was not a very good soldier and as a result I was transferred to a meaningless
job out of the Hazardous Waste Management Division where I could no longer
affect the regulations.

Departure from Statutory Intent

I would like to give the Committee one of the more
outstanding examples of departure from statutory intent and where it has
led.
After we had spent much money on research prior
to and following passage of RCRA, we had concluded that the best approach
to identifying hazardous wastes was through characteristics which, if possessed
by a waste material, would establish that waste as hazardous, as opposed
to our original intent of listing particular waste or industries which
our research showed to be impractical. John Lehman, Director of the Hazardous
Waste Management Division, for example, wrote in correspondence prior to
the proposed regulations, that "we intend to be criteria oriented, both
in defining a waste as hazardous and in describing what should be done
in its management."
However in RCRA, Congress decided to use both lists
and criteria:

. ... the Administrator shall ... develop and promulgate criteria
for identifying the characteristics of hazardous waste, and for listing
hazardous waste, which should be subject-to the provisions of this subtitle,
taking into account. toxicity, persistence, and degradability in nature,
potential for accumulation i.n tissue, and other related factors such as
flammability, corrosiveness, and other hazardous characteristics.

Based on such management direction and guidance and
the statutory mandate which required us to use both lists and characteristics,
the draft standards for "Criteria, Identification, and Listing of Hazardous
Waste" were prepared by the EPA staff on March 6, 1978. These contained
proposed teat protocols for the following hazardous characteristics:

It also listed specific hazardous wastes.
These characteristics had been developed through
research as the best indicators of harmfulness to human health and waste
which were known to posses these characteristics were listed. Scientific
data and actual experience with human health effects established that any
substance that exhibited any one or more of these characteristics was indeed
"hazardous".
On December 18, 1978, EPA proposed hazardous waste
regulations in the FederalRegister. Despite our knowledge of health
effects from all the characteristics, however, the only characteristics
included in the proposed regulations for identifying hazardous waste were
ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, and one form of toxicity.
The toxicity test procedure was limited to only
the 14 chemicals identified in item 7b, with a note that the Agency is
"considering" adding those chemicals listed in the Water Quality Criteria
under the Clean Water Act. There is in fact no test for toxicity in the
sense of feeding the substance to a test animal or in terms of some common
denominator of toxicity. Thus only a fraction of hazardous wastes, an estimated
35%, are identified as such by the proposed regulations.
This cutback had been ordered by EPA management.
I was personally involved in the decision-making process. The reason given
by management for the cutback was to reduce the scope of the regulations
so as to reduce the impact on industry. It was felt (without any evidence)
that our draft regulations would cost American industry too much. It was
also felt that industry already regulated under the Clean water Act should
not be subject to further regulation (even though the Clean Water Act was
responsible for producing much of the hazardous waste}.
This cutback appeared to me to be a violation of
the legislative intent and mandate as well as having an adverse affect
on public health and the economy.

Questionable Explanation for Cutback

To legitimize the cutback in characteristics, an
after-the-fact explanation was devised, which is the explanation that appears
in the FederalRegister. This was that reliable test protocols
were not available for the characteristics that were dropped. While it
may be true that some of the test protocols for the dropped characteristics
are at least arguably not as scientifically reliable as those which were
kept, it is important to keep in mind that this explanation was attached
after the fact to legitimize a limitation of the scope of the regulations,
a limitization that Congress did not intend.
In particular, I don't see how EPA can argue that
there are no acceptable test protocols for radioactivity. And on June 14,
1979 EPA proposed standards under the Clean Water Act which would require
industry to test their waste water discharges for many of the substances
which the proposed RCRA regulations say test protocols are not available.
Moreover, it should be noted that many of the very same test protocols
that were dropped from the March 6, 1978 draft are still used in the proposed
regulations but in a different form. The very same test protocols which
were deemed unsuitable for bringing hazardous waste into the system are
used in Section 250.15 of the proposed standards to allow wastes out of
the system. This includes test protocols for cancer, birth defects, bioaccumulation
and toxicity.
One must conclude from all this that the "test protocol"
story in the FederalRegister was invented after the decision
to drop the hazardous waste characteristics had been made and that the
real reason for the decision was an attempt to reduce the cost to industry
in response to the President's fight against inflation.

Effects of Cutback: Increases Costs

Yet, it should be noted that EPA has put forward
no facts or data to support the contention that cutting back on the number
of hazardous waste characteristics will in fact reduce inflation.
Rather, as an authority on hazardous waste practices,
it is my opinion that the costs and the inflationary impact of regulating
hazardous waste will be increased rather than decreased by the cutback
decision. The reason for this is that it takes vastly more money to clean
up a site where hazardous wastes have been improperly disposed of than
it does to dispose of it correctly in the first place, and the regulations
as proposed will be responsible for creating many sites which will have
to be cleaned up later.
To illustrate this point, consider a manufacturer
whose waste does not appear on the very limited list of characteristics
of hazardous wastes proposed by EPA. He will assume his waste is not hazardous
and he may make decisions about disposing of in a municipal landfill or
make a capital investment in a site of his own. If several years later
EPA adds his waste to the list, he may be required (if not by EPA then
by local pressure) to dig up the site entirely and transport the waste
to a permitted hazardous waste facility, a prospect which would bankrupt
all but the largest of companies. Ultimately, if he cannot clean up his
own waste it is very likely the clean up cost will be borne by the public.
If the complete characteristics of hazardous waste
were published by EPA and if EPA were limited to listing only those wastes
which failed the previously announced characteristics (as was done in the
earlier drafts of these regulations) then everyone would know where they
stand and could act accordingly. This would cost far less in the long run.

Leave Many Wastes Unregulated

I have spent some time doing research into what hazardous
waste will be left unregulated by the Agency's decision to eliminate from
the standards those test protocols which define whether a waste is poisonous
or causes cancer or birth defects and to rely instead only on identification
of specific known hazardous wastes. I have found that about 80% of the
waste from the manufacture of pesticides are not specifically identified
in the proposed standards. Some examples of wastes which the proposed regulations
leave unregulated are:

Waste residue from-the manufacture of C-56 (hexachlorocyclopentadiene)
which was identified in hazardous waste disposal problems at Love Canal
and "Bloody Run" in Niagara Falls; the "valley of the Drums in Kentucky;
Montague, Michigan; Toone, Tennessee; the Louisville sewer system; and
the Memphis sewer system.

Waste residue from the manufacture of Kepone, which destroyed the fishing
in the James River in Virginia.

Waste residue from the manufacture of Mirex which destroyed fishing in
Lake Ontario.

Waste residue from the manufacture of pentachlorophenol which contains
dioxin.

Waste residue from the manufacture of Heptachlor which is a carcinogen.

Waste residue from the manufacture of DBCP which causes sterility.

Whereas previously these wastes may have been disposed
of inadequately and secretly, they can soon (thanks to a clean bill of
health from EPA) be disposed of inadequately and openly. This means
that such a waste may legally be:

Used as fertilizer where it can enter the food chain.

Used as landfill where it can leach into underground drinking water.

Stockpiled where it can run off into surface water and leach into groundwater.

If the waste is volatile (as in Love Canal) it will be allowed to poison
the air without constraint.

Besides the cutback of characteristics, there are
other examples in my opinion where EPA has violated the Congressional intent
of RCRA. I wrote several letters to the public docket on some of these
issues and since EPA removed them from the docket I would like to include
them as an appendix to my testimony.

EPA Management Efficiency and the "Superfund"

I would like to turn now to the issue of the efficiency
of EPA management's approach to the regulation of hazardous waste. As I've
said my background is in operations research and cost benefit analysis
is an area in which I have a great deal of experience.
The "superfund" being proposed by the Administration
to clean up hazardous waste dumps is a classic example of a program which
costs very much and where the benefits are not only small, but in some
respects, negative. This superfund, in my opinion, is the Administration's
response to the adverse publicity they have been getting on their handling
of the hazardous waste issue. This is more of a diversion than a response.
As a result of the news stories about leaking dump
sites as Love Canal, Montague, Michigan, and the "Valley of the Drums",
the focus has been on what to do about these sites, whereas the infinitely
more important issue from the standpoint of public health is what to do
to prevent such sites in the future.
The Administration is moving away from doing things
which protect the environment in favor of doing things which take care
of the consequences of not doing the things which protect the environment.
To illustrate how far this has gone, we are spending millions in Federal
funds to clean up Love Canal in Niagara Falls but we have dropped from
our proposed hazardous waste regulations those very wastes which we are
cleaning up. "Taking care of the consequences of the failure to protect
the environment" is not the same thing as "protecting the environment".
Nor is it a substitute for environmental protection. Therefore it is a
sham to refer to superfund as "environmental legislation" when in fact
it is really disaster relief.
I don't mean to sound uncompassionate for the victims
of bad hazardous waste disposal practices. I don't feel t have to take
a back seat to anyone in my concern for them. If we were allowed to do
our job of finding those sites and warning those people then there would
now be fewer victims. If we are allowed to regulate those wastes then there
will be fewer still. However it strikes me that the problem of cleaning
hazardous waste sites and the relief of the victims belongs more in the
category of disaster relief or welfare relief rather than environmental
protection. And if EPA would rather do that than find these sites, assess
damage and draft and enforce regulations to prevent those disasters, then
some other agency should be found to do this.

Recommendations

I would like to conclude my testimony by making some
recommendations for correcting some of the problems I've identified.
First and most obvious, there is no substitute for
enthusiasm and the will to do the job you're charged with. In my opinion,
EPA and the Administration does not want to regulate industrial
disposal of hazardous waste. Unless this lack of will and attitude is changed,
any money or positions added to EPA's budget for hazardous waste management
is wasted and could be counterproductive.
It is possible to restore a great many of the more
toxic waste .residues (including C-56) dropped from the draft regulations
without having to re-propose the regulations. This can be done by adding
the Water Quality Criteria to the list of fourteen substances in the Drinking
Water Standards. This is discussed in the attached memo from Mr. Marc Turgeon.
In pursuing the issue of what to do about old sites,
I recommend that EPA use the people who have demonstrated their enthusiasm
and competence in identifying the problem. I recommend that they give technical
and legal support to state and local efforts to solve the problem. I further
suggest that enforcement efforts be concentrated on bringing or threatening
to bring imminent hazard or tort action against owners of inactive or existing
hazardous waste sites, when there. are "deep pockets" and sites which pose
the greater health problem.
I would also recommend that EPA concentrate on regulating
hazardous waste and leave disaster relief to others. If Congress wishes
to set up a superfund for this purpose, I would recommend it be administered
by the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration or some other agency
with EPA's role limited to technical advice.
We know from experience with the Clean Water Act
and the Construction Grants Program (which gives billions to municipalities
to construct sewage treatment plants) that EPA's priorities follow the
dollar. If this superfund is administered by EPA than we can expect further
attenuation in interest in all other aspects of hazardous waste management
and perhaps other programs as well.
Lastly, I would ask Congress to have compassion
for the civil servant charged with writing regulations to implement a law
which is opposed by the Administration. He is caught between his conscience
and his career. I recommend that the job of drafting regulations be placed
under an independent agency which answers directly to Congress.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify here today,
and I'll be glad to answer any questions.